August 07, 2012

Cobb's Olympic Journal

All I care about these days are the Olympics. I am a huge fan, and for the past several days most of my spare time has been taken up by watching. I will blog here in a serial way to keep up with what I think is noteworthy.

While much of what I'll care about is the content, I expect that I will break meta over the interpretation of all that transpires. That's because the metastories of the Olympics carry too much weight and I think that most of them are mishandled. That has led me to believe that our carrier, NBC is getting hit for all the wrong reasons. Yet them being old media, there is something we need to do from the mass of eyeballs side.

Here are my overall impressions so far:

1. London.London has done a perfect balancing act. It is my perception that the city has done just enough to draw attention to itself as a host city, but not so much that it has become too much of a distraction. The venues are marvelously tidy or expansive as the case may require, but almost nowhere has any unnecessary attention been drawn to the facilities or the providers of them. No security screwups (aside from the bottle thrown at Usain Bolt). If London has been employing the Ring of Steel, it was worked brilliantly.

2. Opening CeremoniesI have two brief comments in contradistinction to what blather comes by me.

A. The ceremonies were world class, dramatic, beautiful, complex, mature and full of wonder. Except for one flaw. Giant babies are *always* creepy.

B. If you wanted to see the ceremonies in real-time, you should have bought yourself a ticket.

3. HeroesI have three or four people whose character and performance I will remember. The first and foremost is Bradley Wiggens, the cyclist. I think he's is appropriately awesome, and his example will make me think twice about ever mocking the physique of somebody built like Ichabod Crane. Wiggo is a righteous dude, a regular bloke, and true sportsman.

The second is Hiromi Miyaki the <48kg women's weightlifter who took silver. What an astonishing performance. She is an impressive mighty mite, and shouts out her gung ho attitude. Something about her captures, for me, the true spirit of the games. Not a lot of fanfare, but she faces the crushing weight.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the steeplechase, but these 3000 meters seem to be a lot easier for today's competitors than for those in Olympics past. And so now I have to pass the baton off to the 10,000 meters. You really couldn't ask for a more storybook performance than that delivered by Mo Farah in front of his countrymen, and what a show of pure joy in celebration.

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Cobb's Olympic Journal

All I care about these days are the Olympics. I am a huge fan, and for the past several days most of my spare time has been taken up by watching. I will blog here in a serial way to keep up with what I think is noteworthy.

While much of what I'll care about is the content, I expect that I will break meta over the interpretation of all that transpires. That's because the metastories of the Olympics carry too much weight and I think that most of them are mishandled. That has led me to believe that our carrier, NBC is getting hit for all the wrong reasons. Yet them being old media, there is something we need to do from the mass of eyeballs side.

Here are my overall impressions so far:

1. London.London has done a perfect balancing act. It is my perception that the city has done just enough to draw attention to itself as a host city, but not so much that it has become too much of a distraction. The venues are marvelously tidy or expansive as the case may require, but almost nowhere has any unnecessary attention been drawn to the facilities or the providers of them. No security screwups (aside from the bottle thrown at Usain Bolt). If London has been employing the Ring of Steel, it was worked brilliantly.

2. Opening CeremoniesI have two brief comments in contradistinction to what blather comes by me.

A. The ceremonies were world class, dramatic, beautiful, complex, mature and full of wonder. Except for one flaw. Giant babies are *always* creepy.

B. If you wanted to see the ceremonies in real-time, you should have bought yourself a ticket.

3. HeroesI have three or four people whose character and performance I will remember. The first and foremost is Bradley Wiggens, the cyclist. I think he's is appropriately awesome, and his example will make me think twice about ever mocking the physique of somebody built like Ichabod Crane. Wiggo is a righteous dude, a regular bloke, and true sportsman.

The second is Hiromi Miyaki the <48kg women's weightlifter who took silver. What an astonishing performance. She is an impressive mighty mite, and shouts out her gung ho attitude. Something about her captures, for me, the true spirit of the games. Not a lot of fanfare, but she faces the crushing weight.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the steeplechase, but these 3000 meters seem to be a lot easier for today's competitors than for those in Olympics past. And so now I have to pass the baton off to the 10,000 meters. You really couldn't ask for a more storybook performance than that delivered by Mo Farah in front of his countrymen, and what a show of pure joy in celebration.